WI: Santa Anna becomes a merchant

While he's hardly the most successful or admirable historical figure, Antonio López de Santa Anna was a very colorful and historically significant individual. But he might not have been so. Santa Anna got his start when he joined the military at age 16, but this was against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to be a merchant.

Suppose he acquiesced to his parents' wishes. How would things have changed for Mexico? What might his career in business have looked like?
 
OTL late-career Santa Anna tried to pivot into the chicle business. In a bold departure, he pitched this gum people had been chewing for thousands of years to be used as ... car tires. People were not into that. Then someone probably said "Why don't we just sell it as something people chew instead????" and thus chewing gum was born. Perhaps a younger Santa Anna with a more traditional vision for gum products jumpstarts the industry early and becomes the Gum King of America. Imagine all the delightful mischief an opulently wealthy American citizen Santa Anna could get up to from the mid-1820s to late-1870s. I want to see the world with Santa Anna in Tammany Hall.
 
OTL late-career Santa Anna tried to pivot into the chicle business. In a bold departure, he pitched this gum people had been chewing for thousands of years to be used as ... car tires. People were not into that. Then someone probably said "Why don't we just sell it as something people chew instead????" and thus chewing gum was born. Perhaps a younger Santa Anna with a more traditional vision for gum products jumpstarts the industry early and becomes the Gum King of America. Imagine all the delightful mischief an opulently wealthy American citizen Santa Anna could get up to from the mid-1820s to late-1870s. I want to see the world with Santa Anna in Tammany Hall.
well, sort of...
his chicle supply did play a role, but he didn't invent chewing gum, nor was he the main actor in popularizing/modernizing the product.
https://historybecauseitshere.weebly.com/general-santa-anna-chicle-and-chewing-gum.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum

Edit: yet another version
https://allthatsinteresting.com/antonio-lopez-de-santa-anna
 
as to the original question...
You can write the narrative any way you want. There were existing issues which SA did not create: a wide gap between conservatives and liberals; the sparsely populated remote northern regions under pressure from native americans and at risk from the US; a church hierarchy looking to sabotage reforms detrimental to their hold on power. Santa Anna, at the most charitable, failed to steer the country through these issues. At worst, he bungled badly and made the situation worse.
It is almost always possible to have things go worse (not a believer in the expression things can't get any worse), but in this case I'd say it seems like there is ample opportunity for things to go better. How much better is up for debate.
 
well, sort of...
his chicle supply did play a role, but he didn't invent chewing gum, nor was he the main actor in popularizing/modernizing the product.
https://historybecauseitshere.weebly.com/general-santa-anna-chicle-and-chewing-gum.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum
apparently, in Mexico, there are a lot of folk tales about Santa Anna. That he was almost eaten by cannibals. That he ended up marrying the wrong sister when he made his pitch to the father of the girl he wanted to marry, and did it so badly that the father misunderstood and thought he wanted to marry the other sister. The famous "Yellow Rose of Texas". That he was a Freemason. That he paid court to Emperor Agustin Tubide's spinster sister Nicolasa. And a lot more....
 
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